New dad dies after loose tire slams into his windshield on Texas freeway

A new father was killed when a tire came loose and flew through the windshield of his SUV while it was traveling on a Texas freeway, a report said. 

Clayton Vaugh, 21, was sitting in the passenger seat of a KIA SUV traveling on the westbound side of the Katy Freeway in Houston when the tire smashed through the windshield on Thursday, according to ABC 13.

A landscaping-style trailer was in the eastbound lane of the freeway when the tire flew off and bounced towards the KIA, crushing the windshield and Vaughn while his girlfriend was driving.

A picture of the wrecked KIA SUV shows the front passenger side of the vehicle completely caved in from the impact.

After the impact, the girlfriend, who was not identified, veered across all six lanes of the highway before hitting a wall.

The girlfriend is the mother of Vaughn’s 4-month-old child.

She was transported to a nearby hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

The trailer driver did not stop after the tire flew off the vehicle, and police are currently looking for them.

Vaughn’s uncle, Evan Richard, said he was heartbroken over his nephew’s death and urged as many witnesses as possible to come forward to help his family get the answers they need.

“I’m not here to place judgment,” he told ABC. “Things happen, but obviously, negligence of some sort played a role in this.

“He was a passenger in a vehicle struck by an oncoming tire. What are the chances of something like this happening? [You should] know, you are endangering lives around you, and I can’t bring him back. But I can get the message out that you can do better. The city can do better.”

Richard described Vaughn as a “big, old teddy bear” who was excited to raise his daughter.

Randrell Alexander, who was on the freeway that night, recalled the chaos when she said she saw the tire fly off the trailer of a black truck without a license plate.

She said the tire rolled into the HOV lane, where a white pickup truck slammed into it and sent it flying into the westbound lanes.

“It went straight into the windshield like ‘Boom!’ I saw it. I saw glass and I saw the hood pop up and the car started spinning,” Alexander told ABC.

She claimed that if she could have seen the whole incident, then the driver of the black truck must have also witnessed it but continued to drive off.

Police said the driver of the black truck would be charged with failure to stop and render aid, if and when they’re found.